Assessing the Impact of Jeff D. Ullman: Assessing the Impact of Jeff D. Ullman Peter P. Chen Computer Science Dept Louisiana State University Pchen@lsu.edu, www.csc.lsu.edu/~chen (Presented at Ullman’s Retirement Symposium, Stanford Univ., Dec. 6, 2002)


Outline: Outline How to assess the impact of a scientist? Scope and Limitations of this study Research Methodology and Tools Research Results Personal Note Conclusions


How to Assess the Impact of a Scientist?: How to Assess the Impact of a Scientist? Usability Actual Implementation, Tested in Real World Number (or Percentage) of Users Citation Number of Citations of the Most Cited Paper Number of Total Citations Research Pioneering Leadership Scope, number of papers, time length, Number of the followers Education Influence Academic Family Tree; Productivity and Paper Citations of the nodes in the Family Tree Book Leadership


Scope of this Study: Scope of this Study Focusing on Jeff Ullman Many speakers today already discussed the Usability and Research Pioneering Activity Dimensions, we did not do such study to avoid duplication Concentrating on the Paper Citation and Education Influence Dimensions (including influence on me)


Research Methodology & Tools: Research Methodology & Tools Using Primarily “CiteSeer,” supplementing with other databases and search engines Discovering various problems: many data errors, inconsistencies Analysis of the Academic Tree posted at JDU’s home page & himself Building an user interface to the database for simple queries Comparing with the CS faculty in 5 universities


Education Influence of Jeff Ullman: Education Influence of Jeff Ullman Academic Family Tree One of the Largest in Computer Science Probably the largest in DB Productivity and Citation Index of People in the Academic Tree One of the Most Productive and Most Cited Group of Researchers Book Leadership


Analysis of Data of Ullman’s Academic Family Tree: Analysis of Data of Ullman’s Academic Family Tree How many generations? Which generation has most #people? And what is the # of people? What is the total number of nodes? Which generation is most productive and influential (in terms of)? Most number of publications/person Highest average number of citations? Who is the most Productive? Influential?


Analysis of Data of Ullman’s Academic Family Tree: Analysis of Data of Ullman’s Academic Family Tree How many generations? 5 Which generation has most #people? 2nd And what is the # of people? 121 What is the total number of nodes? 249 Which generation is most productive and influential (in terms of)? Most number of publications/person? 1st, 18.05 Highest average number of citations? 1st, 163.34 Who is the most Productive? Howard Siegel, 373 Influential? Larry Petterson (1985, 3rd G.) 1684, Student of D. Commer/R. Sethi


Comparisons of JDU’s Family with CS Depts: Comparisons of JDU’s Family with CS Depts See separate spreadsheets (Note: the spreadsheets are not linked at this time. Will be linked in the near future)


How is Jeff ranked in the “Citation” Dimension?: How is Jeff ranked in the “Citation” Dimension? CiteSeer maintains two useful statistics Most Cited Author Most Cited Documents (including books and articles) Warning: CiteSeer data contains a lot of errors However, it is useful as a rough estimate, particularly for not very common last names


Cumulative Citations of Jeff Ullman’s Publications: Cumulative Citations of Jeff Ullman’s Publications Out of 629, 254 authors in the CiteSeer DB Jeff is ranked as No. 2 The total number of citations of all Jeff’s publications is: 10592


Individual Publication Citations of Jeff Ullman: Individual Publication Citations of Jeff Ullman How many Jeff’s publications are ranked in the top 200 based on CiteSeer Data as of September 2002? Answer: 5


How many JDU’s publications are ranked in the top 200?: How many JDU’s publications are ranked in the top 200? 12.   Doc     Context   1455   [4] John Hopcroft and Jeffrey Ullman. Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation. Addison Wesley, 1979. 21.   Book   Context   1171   [2] A.V. Aho, J.E. Hopcroft, and J.D. Ullman, The Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1974. 26.   Book   Context   1107   [1] A.V. Aho, R. Sethi, and J.D. Ullman, Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools., Addison-Wesley, 1986.  42.   Doc     Context   849   [Ull88] Ullman J. D.: Principles of Database and Knowledge-Base Systems, Volumes 1 and 2. Computer Science Press, 1988. 66.   Doc     Context   635   [23] A.V. Aho, R. Sethi, and J.D Ullman. Compilers Principles, Techniques and Tools. March 1988.


Book Leadership: Book Leadership JDM is the author or co-author of 5 most cited books Many best selling textbooks Usually one of the first textbooks in a particular topic/field “Model” textbooks for other textbook writers to follow


When did I meet with JDU the First Time?: When did I meet with JDU the First Time? ??? Need the help from Dave Maier and Alberto Mendelzon (two great historians) to dig out old historical data and compare notes. Between 1974 to 1978, there was a DB workshop at Bell Lab. JDM was there Al Aho was there, too (?)


Reasons Why I am here: Reasons Why I am here As a member of DB Community As a person who have been benefited from his book leadership Jeff’s book on “Principles of Database Systems,” is probably the first book starting with the ER Model first Other DB textbooks follow


Conclusions (1): Conclusions (1) JDM has made very significant impact in computer science Ranked No. 2 in total citations 5 Most cited books and articles in top-200 cited publications Best-Selling Book Author One of the largest and most “productive” academic family tree The DB community (particularly myself) has been benefited from JDU Today, we pay tribute to him (to make an acyclic graph to a cyclic graph


Conclusions (2): Conclusions (2) The DB community (particularly myself) has been benefited from JDU Today, we pay tribute to him (to make an acyclic graph to a cyclic graph)


Conclusions (3): Conclusions (3) We are here today to say to one of the greatest computer Scientists: “Dr. Jeff D. Ullman, Thank You!”